Rabokki is a Korean street food made from instant noodles and spicy stir-fried rice cakes. The name comes from adding Ramyeon (Korean instant noodles) and Ddukbokki (spicy rice cake). Along with these two main ingredients, fishcake is a staple that completes the dish.
As everyone familiar with Korean culture knows, Rabokki (라볶이) is a spicy dish that you may have tried by now, especially if you love Korean food.
Tteokbokki (also spelled ddukbokki, ddeokbokki, dukbokki or topokki) literally translates to stir fried rice cakes. The Korean rice cake is known for its close association with Korean Royal Cuisine, while Ramyeon is a popular meal among students in Korea.
Many people love this dish for three reasons: it's cheap, has a familiar taste to other countries' cuisines, and is easy to make at home.
Rabokki Ingredients
To make rabokki at home, you’ll need the following ingredients.
- Korean rice cakes
- A packet of instant noodles
- Korean soup stock or dashi stock
- Gochujang (Korean red pepper paste)
- Gochugaru (Korean red pepper flakes)
- Soy sauce
- Brown sugar
- Garlic
- Salt
- Pepper
- Sesame oil
- Green onions
- Toasted sesame seeds
- Onion (optional)
- Sausages (optional)
- Boiled eggs (optional)
- Fish cakes (optional)
Korean rice cakes
The type of rice cakes used in this spicy Korean dish are garatteok. They are long and cylinder-shaped. These will give you a good soft chew in between the spicy sauce. They also soak up just the perfect amount of sauce.
You can also use thin-sliced rice cakes. However, as these are thinner, we don’t think they give as nice a bite as garrateok.
If you can’t find Korean rice cakes, a good substitute is Chinese rice cakes. These are usually a bit shorter but cylinder in shape. In terms of taste, the Chinese ones are a bit tougher and less bouncy. However, these are very minimal differences.
Ramyun
While you can use any instant ramen noodles, we highly recommend Korean ramyun or ramyeon. The instant noodles are typically a little bit thicker, so they will hold their shape and springy texture better and for longer when submerged in rabokki.
Our favourite Korean ramyun noodle pack to use for our rabokki recipe is Shin Ramyun or Samyang.
Korean soup stock
Korean soup stock uses dried anchovies as the main flavour base. We like to use instant powder packs to save time, but if this is hard to find, you can also use Japanese dashi stock. The main difference is that Japanese soup stock typically has bonito flakes. However, this won’t make a huge difference to your dish, as the spice and savoury notes from Gochujang take precedence.
Gochujang
Gochujang paste makes our rice cake dish red and gives it a distinctive flavour. This is a key ingredient in our recipe and many Korean dishes.
Despite the bright red look, the paste itself isn’t too spicy, as it’s mixed with other ingredients like glutinous rice and fermented soybeans. Most of the spice for this dish will come from the gochugaru chilli flakes you add.
Gochugaru
Gochugaru are Korean red chilli flakes that add spice to this dish. However, you can omit this if you don’t want to add more spice to your rabokki. If you can’t find Korean chili flakes, you can add an extra tablespoon of gochujang to the base sauce mixture instead. It won’t be as spicy as we think it should be, but it’s a good substitute.
If you want to increase the heat in this dish, you can add 1-2 teaspoon of red chilli flakes. We recommend adding the chilli flakes in increments to avoid getting too spicy.
Rabokki Recipe
Ingredients
Sauce
Garnish
- ½ teaspoon sesame oil
- 2 green onions sliced, green part only
- toasted sesame seeds
Instructions
- Mix all the tteokbokki sauce ingredients in a bowl.
- Heat a pan over medium-high heat and add half of the oil. Once the oil is hot, add the sausages to the pan and fry for 2 minutes or until they char slightly. Then, remove the sausages and put them aside. Add another tablespoon of oil, and once the oil is hot, fry the sliced onions for 1 minute or until they start to wilt.
- Then, add the dashi soup stock and the rice cakes. Bring the stock to boil. Then, pour in the sauce and stir until well mixed.
- Add the ramen, sausages, and the rest of your toppings, spreading them around the pan. Reduce the heat to medium. Allow the ramen noodles to cook while the sauce thickens slightly.
- Once the ramen has cooked to your liking, turn off the heat. Drizzle some sesame oil over it and stir it a bit. Finally, sprinkle some scallions and sesame seeds over the rabokki. Serve and enjoy while it's still hot.
Notes
Nutrition
Calories have been calculated using an online calculator. Nutritional information offered on Honest Food Talks is for general information purposes and is only a rough estimate.
Cooking Tips
Here are some cooking tips to elevate your spicy Korean noodle dish to the next level.
Soggy noodles
If you want to avoid soggy noodles, we recommend turning the heat off when the ramen noodles have just cooked through. This will give the noodles an al dente texture at first.
However, over time, the ramen noodles will continue to cook in the heat and soften. We prefer it this way so we can slowly enjoy our spicy Korean rice cake dish without the noodles getting soggy.
Adding cheese
Additionally, we would recommend adding cheese to make this into a cheese tteokbokki dish. In our opinion, cheese makes a lot of difference to the dish. There's something about the sauce mixed with cheese that goes really well.
Adding more spice
Personally, we think the rabokki we’ve tasted in Korea is much spicer than those in the UK and Japan. If you want more spice in your Rabokki, we recommend adding more gochugaru in increments to the sauce.
Another hack is to add the spicy flavouring package from your instant Ramyeon noodles to your dish. Similarly, you can add the dried vegetables, too. However, we only recommend doing this with Korean brands.
Spicy flavour packs from other countries might not work as well with the other flavours in this dish. Whether you can make it to Korea or cooking it at home, we hope this will intrigues you to try this Korean dish. It’s the perfect introduction to Korean cuisine. For more delicious K-snacks, try our Korean corn dog recipe.
Diego
Anna
Delish!